Virtual and Augmented Reality (VRAR): Market Opportunity, Emerging Ecosystem and Leading Use Cases

SummaryThe “Virtual and Augmented Reality (VRAR): Market Opportunity, Emerging Ecosystem and Leading Use Cases”, a thematic research report by GlobalData, examines the current state and outlook of the VRAR markets, emerging use cases as well as the evolution of the provider ecosystem.Driven largely by massive investments from the world’s leading technology competitors including Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Sony, the technology has become accessible to both consumers and businesses.

Still, the adoption and usage of VRAR is minimal, and the penetration of VRAR headsets is extremely low. In this report, we explore growth drivers and key trends shaping the global VRAR market and identify leading use cases across consumer and business markets.

Development of the virtual reality and augmented reality (VRAR) markets turned the corner in 2016-2017, fuelled largely by an infusion of capital from leading tech companies and other investors.Despite robust momentum on the supply side, the VRAR market is still nascent, with the penetration of VRAR headsets very low relative to other computing devices.

Consequently, leading players are focused on evolving the technology toward more friendly, wireless form factors, boosting device affordability and improving the user experience.The creation of a seamless solutions and apps ecosystem is key to VRAR market expansion.

Now their focus is to develop compelling content offerings to drive users to their proprietary or open source platforms.As a result, VRAR applications are emerging across the industry to address a variety of use cases.

The universe of potential VRAR apps is nearly limitless, from pure entertainment (gaming) to business productivity (virtual collaboration), all the way to life-saving tools (disease diagnosis and treatment). The market shift is creating opportunities for Telcos and other technology players in VRAR content creation, as well as content platforms and services.

The report is structured as follows –– Section 1: The global VRAR market. This section provides an overview of the revenue opportunity, growth drivers and key trends shaping the global VRAR market, such as the increasing emphasis on device mobility and affordability, and the proliferation of VRAR solutions for Enterprise engineering, sales, operations and productivity.– Section 2: The VRAR ecosystem. This section examines the VRAR ecosystem with a focus on headset and platform providers, and key use case applications showing potential in the near term.– Section 3: Findings and recommendations. We conclude the report with a summary of VRAR market and ecosystem dynamics and opportunities for telcos in VRAR.

ScopeSome of the findings of the report include –– The nascent VRAR market is fueled by large investments from technology players and the need for businesses to digitalize operations, combined with growth of the digital-first population. Early industry entrants face the typical challenges of new technology businesses, namely procuring device usability, overcoming user barriers, attracting content developers and identifying effective business models.– Despite the strong momentum seen on the supply side, both the VR and the AR markets are still in the early growth stages. Adoption and usage of VRAR by consumers is still minimal, and the penetration of VRAR headsets is extremely low relative to other computing devices, such as smartphones and gaming consoles.– The emerging VRAR solutions ecosystem is being shaped by six key trends and six leading device/platform providers. The industry is seeing early successes in leisure/entertainment, medicine, advertising, commerce, education and manufacturing, among other segments. Enterprises and public service organizations such as hospitals are testing VRAR applications as a means to improve service delivery and reduce costs.– Telco stakes in the future of VRAR go beyond broadband connectivity. Participation in various segments of the VRAR solutions value chain can help Telcos accelerate 5G monetization to offset the huge impact that VRAR services will have on network traffic.

Reasons to buy– This report provides an examination of the current state and outlook of the VRAR markets, emerging use cases as well as the evolution of the provider ecosystem.– The report highlights VRAR market trends and opportunities or emerging applications across industries along with use cases which can help service providers to identify target markets and create new revenue streams.– The report discusses concrete opportunities for VRAR, providing a number of actionable recommendations for telcos.